


panic

by sugodemic



Category: K-pop, 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Anxiety Disorder, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Healthy Relationships, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other, Panic Attacks, Reader-Insert, and it's not really angst, boyfriend yoongi, but there is comfort involved, it's very visceral, just take that warning seriously please, please take the anxiety warning seriously, very visceral descriptions of a bad headspace straight from my anxiety-ridden times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 06:45:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5487608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugodemic/pseuds/sugodemic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>it’s night when you can’t sleep facing him. dark hair spills from his hood, so messy that it reaches for you. his lips part. he releases a breath. don’t wake him this time, lying about needing the bathroom, your lungs a deflated balloon. you’re a burden. you are a living example of rigor mortis. turn your back to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	panic

It’s night when you can’t sleep facing him. Dark hair spills from his hood, so messy that it reaches for you. His lips part. He releases a breath. Don’t wake him this time, lying about needing the bathroom, your lungs a deflated balloon. You’re a burden. You are a living example of rigor mortis. Turn your back to him.

7:15 A.M. Class in two hours. Open dilated eyes. Newborn sunlight stretches from the window and stains two sets of tangled legs. Cushioned by his worn gray hoodie, his arms circle you from behind. Press your sweaty forehead against them. Pretend you’re being romantic and hide the fact that _you_ —are an infant that can’t hold its head up any longer.

His sandpaper voice brushes your cheek. You lurch. And you scatter. Thought you were okay today, but you have that final and a beehive in your skull. The rusted padlock expanding between your lungs is writhing. It sprouts arms and hands and free will; it grabs your neck, drags you back thirty paces. Yoongi’s breath blankets the back of your neck. His nose presses into your hair, lighting the gooseflesh on your scalp afire. You focus on his skin, your anesthetic, and mouth foreign words. Practice, then speak. Nothing comes. Just can’t do anything on your own. Don’t mess this up. Stop thinking. Do not. Panic. You cannot.

Panic.

Yoongi’s words prioritize. Form against your ear. “You’re shaking.” His arms tighten. Because he… is your skin. Still your organs—spill onto the floor.

You are stupid to assume he’s asleep when he presses his face into the back of your neck, finds your hand, brushes it before you stand. Skin screaming for yours. Hairs stretching to touch you. Fingers shifting just a fraction where your warmth lingers. Stupid to think he doesn’t notice when you return, bathroom tile engraved on your cheek. Be quiet. Don’t be a burden. Next time. When breathing isn’t a marathon. A trek for water in a desert. A trigger for collective disenfranchisement.

Other people have it a lot worse off. Yoongi is busier than you. He works harder than you. He’s not weak. What does that say about you? You call your family every week, have class, and a full time job; he has a full time lifestyle that drains more control than is humane. But you can handle a little stress because you’re happy, just like him. You’re lucky. And you have no reason to be this.

 _Why_ aren’t you breathing? _Why_ aren’t you normal?

He inhales and holds it. “What’s wrong?”

You forget years of Korean.

Yoongi shifts and tears his arms away. “Are you sick?”

The joints in your hands seize. Your trachea’s a bendy straw. Even your hair follicles ache. But you’re not sick. You don’t need to see a doctor. Your family doesn’t believe in that. Never something that serious. You’re overreacting. Your body just decided to play along. Don’t take it seriously. It’s just something you have to…

Deal with.

Yoongi props his head up with his hand. “Tell me what’s wrong.” It’s a demand that the soft question mark at the end doesn’t negate. The bed is spinning and levitating. How can you tell him that?

Your tears are acid. You’re the soggy lettuce that’s peeled off the burger, cut so thick no one can taste what they paid for. How can you say these words that are in a language neither of you know? It burns your tongue.

You shake your head, wordless, and all at once, you stand on an unsteady something that rolls and shifts. You’re supposed to put one foot in front of the other. Pretend you’re walking on the same chilly hardwood as him. Except you’re pretty sure you had an amputation and your veins are still pulsing to exorcise the poison.

He’ll want to break up after this and forget you, who inflates throughout the day and deflates all at once, and bleeds out on the floor and permanently stains it. The concept of him being by your side is pressure. Attached to a bungee cord, your heart drops and you pull away. You slide to the floor. Your stomach’s running laps in the hallway.

It’s cold.

“Talk to me.” His words aren’t unkind. Your brain still hiccups, and you roll onto your stomach and press every inch of skin to the cold hardwood. You’re floating on top of the solid surface. Winter and summer burst from the seams of your skull. The fire pulses down into the floor and you can breathe again. You sit up and lean against the bedframe, shaking your head over and over.

Yoongi gets smaller. Crouches down in front of you and just watches for a few seconds. “You’re—” He almost chokes on the word. “Kinda scaring me.” It’s the first time he’s said that to you. It’s the first time in a long time that he’s verbalized fear. He crushes his breaths into a manageable size. “You won’t—”

“I know.”

He tangles his fingers into his hair, like he wants to pull it over his eyes. “Do you want to talk?”

You shake your head.

“Okay.” Yoongi folds your hand into his. “Water?” The hoodie’s hanging off him now. He’s cold. And he’s sweating. “Say something.”

You don’t.

“Shit. Okay. Okay.” He swallows. “Something else? Anything else? I just need to know if—if I should… I don’t know. Call 911? Or give you a hug?”

“Don’t call 911. Whatever you do. It won’t help.”

Yoongi squeezes his eyes shut. “Don’t say that. I just need to know what to do, and then I can get things under control.”

“You can’t _fix_ it, Yoongi. Okay? It’s fine. _I’m_ fine.”

His eyes snap open. “You are not _fine_ .” He spits the word like it’s poison. He paces to the door. “You just don’t get it, do you? You’re the last one— _the last_ —who should be saying you are.”

 

x

 

Yoongi offers water and a jelly sandwich once you open your eyes. “Seokjin made this. For you.”

You try not to look like you’ve just run a marathon. Blink a few times. You’re not sure how long you’ve been sleeping. There’s a knot in your neck, and the sun isn’t directly in front of the window anymore. Your mind slips into gear, and you tilt your head. “We have bread?”

He doesn’t look you in the eye. “Namjoon bought some.”

“But he couldn’t remember peanut butter?”

Yoongi puts the plate on the nightstand, even though he doesn’t like when you eat on his bed and get crumbs everywhere—like a child. He does it himself, though, but claims that he only eats on a certain blanket (the one on top) which encases the comforter he sleeps under like some sort of shell. Whereas _you_ get crumbs between the covers, and then he’s picking them out all night.

While you sip the water, he sits on the foot of the bed, wrinkling the blanket between his fingers. He nods a few times, the way he does when he’s out of it and not sure if you’re watching him or saying something, so he just nods to be sure—to make you think he’s okay.

You look away, giving him room to think. There are times when Yoongi is like a leaf, quiet and free; he’s never had a problem with saying he’ll be back later, or asking you, in his low and ragged voice, to leave him alone—to give him some space—because he’d feel safest in the confines of his room. His territory.

But recently, Yoongi’s wanted to be alone together. He’s wanted to be far away and solitary, but anchored by the grip of your hand, which twitches like a child’s while his remains motionless and floppy (something that you tease him over after watching that hi-touch video a few weeks ago). When he’s squinting against the dim light of his laptop, eyes drooping at the edges, hair like charcoal smeared across his forehead, typing deliriously with one hand, he wants his fingers lazily tangled between yours.

Yoongi is a fallen leaf that trusts you not to blow him somewhere he doesn’t want to be.

His voice pierces the silence, and he starts when his thoughts hit the air. “God, I thought you were having nightmares.”

You’re still sitting on the floor, back pressed against the bedframe. Its firmness and discomfort keeps you here. The words, somehow, aren’t open to a reply. He’s marked them with a period, but the paragraph isn’t complete. The enter key hasn’t yet been tapped.

“Yoongi?” He nods, and you continue, “How long have you known? That I’m… You know?”

“Not always okay mentally?”

“Don’t say it like that.”

“Yeah, okay.” His voice is hard. He squeezes his hands. “For awhile. I just didn’t think this was why you were so hesitant to stay the night.”

“I get overwhelmed before class starts, before the day starts, and I don’t always feel it inside. The pressure. I don’t feel it and I just—” You deflate. “The pressure, Yoongi, it makes it so I’m too full to feel. I take things on and I think I’m cool with it and I get praise and it makes a little room inside but at night—at night, when I’m lying in bed, thinking about… whatever I’m thinking about, I’m not fine with any of it. Trying to think is like trying to do calculus in a tornado. I want to sleep through life and get out of everything but my mind tells me there’s no choice but to freak out over it.”

“Do you want advice or do you just want to talk?”

Most people don’t offer an option. But with him, it’s as simple as one of those “check _yes_ or _no_ ” notes kids give, asking if you like someone. Or maybe that’s texts now, or maybe kids are asking a lot more than that now (or maybe it only ever happens in the movies nowadays). “Just... talk. Just talk to me, Yoongi. I don’t hear your voice enough these days.” _Except on the radio._

“I didn’t mind. You not coming over for awhile. I didn’t mind and I want you to know that. That I didn’t date you for the sake of getting you into my bed and there was never any pressure. From me, at least. I don’t know about you. And all those times I ignored your advances, it wasn’t because I was busy or I didn’t want to fuck the living daylights out of you, it was because there’s no way to get consent when you’re just going to say yes because you feel like you should.”

You glance at the sandwich. “Did you tell him anything? Seokjin.”

Yoongi turns his head towards you, but still doesn’t look. “Do you want me to?”

“I didn’t want to tell you, so. Not really?”

He flinches. “Okay.” He shifts. The mattress sighs. It takes him awhile to trust his words again. “You’re just really predictable, and he’s just really, well… himself. Perceptive. The works.” He grimaces. “And I was… I had to go outside and I only go outside when I’m mad. That didn’t really help. I’m sorry if you wanted to pretend things were fine—are fine. But trust me, I didn’t say anything. It’s not like I’d know where to start, except with the truth. That I was scared and haven’t been able to do shit about it for _months_ and that’s probably because you don’t want me to but I really don’t care about that right now. And maybe I should.”

“I’m—”

“Don’t.” The word ricochets off the walls. “I’m not accepting any apologies. Not one of them. _I_ didn’t want to bring it up. I just tried hugging you at night and pretended I understood everything and how to handle it. I didn’t.” Yoongi tilts his head towards you. His eyes are red, and his cheeks are puffy and irritated. “I don’t,” he admits between a crumpled smile and an exhale that resembles shattered, self-deprecating laughter.

Yoongi pauses between words, like they’re a cord he’s untangling. “Namjoon… said you have the look of someone living in the future. Who’s convinced themselves that they have more control than they do, or should, and thinks they must be doing something very damn wrong. Something like that. He used fancier words.” He passes a hand over his face. “You’re not punctual or always responsible, but you’re predictable, like I said. You’re easily distracted by electronics, and you’ll stand up for things you’ve never even heard of until that day, and you’re the kind of person to complain about needing to do something while not doing it. When someone like you has something on their mind, it’s like they’ve just come back from the gym but are still holding the weights.”

You’re shaking, because you didn’t even notice it before. That your desperate attempts to keep them from worrying are counterproductive. The sunshine boys act extra crazy for you lately, like they’re all trying to drag you out of your quicksand mind. When they play, their eyes return to you constantly, waiting for a reaction. Jin evaluates your expressions and is happiest when this silent consensus is met. He asks you to cook with him, which forces you out of yourself in order to not chop off a finger, and knows the gentle comfort of a genuine desire to know about your day, regardless of the answer. And Namjoon asks for your opinions, reminding you that they matter, helps with your homework (albeit haphazardly), and shoves music on you with strict punctuality (almost as strict as Jeongguk and his links to memes). Yoongi just watches over you—a silent guard.

You put the glass of water on the nightstand. “Well, I didn’t want to worry you.”

“I want to worry about you.”

Your breath catches.

“I want you to annoy me,” he says. “I want you on my mind, distracting me from things. Yeah, you complicate my life. Yeah, you were unplanned. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be around. For _all_ of it.” He pulls his hood further over his face, shading his eyes. “I want you. Everyone needs someone in their life who doesn’t assume everything’s just fine.”

Yoongi’s arms are under you, lifting you off the floor because you’re way too good for it. “It’s my right to make you feel like a big deal.” The way he holds you is like he wants you to think he’ll drop you—just so you’ll squeal and laugh—but his hands might as well be superglued to you. That’s where he wants them to be anyway.

He is just holding you. He drapes you over the bed but his hands remain against your side. His clammy, restless thumbs brush the skin under your shirt.

Often, Yoongi’s touch is fire from your scalp to your toenails, and his voice is the first steaming drop of coffee to hit the inside of the mug, and the last drop of the chilled cream that transforms it forever.

But there are times where his limp hand blurs into yours and he’s just a tastefully unlit candle that’s given you control of the lighter. Or he’s cold and damp like a raindrop—fully intact but part of something bigger. Min Yoongi is many things. He is the condensation on a glass, the steam on a mirror, the dizzying smell of a family home right after it’s been emptied, when air explores where it hasn’t before, and takes control of what is yours no longer.

Yoongi rolls you onto your stomach, crawls in after you, and rolls you back over so you’re propped against his chest. He says, “I’m a really good listener. Like, the best.”

“Last time you were listening, your eyes were closed.”

“I know what you said. That’s all that matters.”

“The fact that I repeat myself a lot is _not_ an excuse.”

“Yeah, but you repeat yourself and I fall asleep. That’s our thing. We’re already the perfect grandparents.”

“ _Min Yoongi_. Stop stealing Taehyung’s jokes. Please.”

He huffs. The pretense of joking completed, he grabs his cell, and taps for a bit. “Really, though. I’m listening. I’m not good at replying but I’m listening. I do my best talking when I’m just—” He’s quiet for a second. “Mmm. When I’m just thinking out loud. Maybe you’re the same way? Maybe you need room to let your words breathe. Before you figure them out. That’s what I want you to do. Figure it out. I can get it later. Me getting it isn’t gonna make you feel the way you want to feel.”

You tilt your head back to look at him. “Hey. I love when you do that.”

“Do what?”

“Mean to say a little and end up saying a lot.”

“Thinking out loud,” he corrects. He sounds incredibly proud of himself. Then he exhales and the room drains into silence and he stares at his phone. “I think you had some sort of anxiety or panic attack.”

“Did you really just Google my symptoms?” It’s more a statement than a question.

“Don’t change the subject.”

“But you just—”

“Fuck you,” he says, and you don’t know how he makes that word contain all affection in the world. “Yes, I _really_ just Googled your symptoms. Don’t be sassy with me.”

You press closer to him to get a view of the screen. “‘How to help someone with anxiety’?”

He tosses his cell across the bed. His hand settles on your hip, fluttering, mirroring his pulse as it drills into you. “I didn’t want you to see that.”

“Why not?”

“Pride.” He flicks a crumb off the bed and picks up his cell again, but doesn’t turn it on. “I’ve been researching night terrors for awhile now. Turns out I was wrong about that. I like to pretend I know how to protect you.”

You’re like snow, melting slowly and then all at once, flooding from the unraveling stitches of yourself. It doesn’t quite reach your mouth or your eyes or your neurons, but you come undone, molecules rolling on the floor like a violent game of marbles.

It is akin to your every organ magnetizing, trying to push away from each other and straight out of your skin. The first drop of gasoline carves your cheek and then you can’t hold it back. “God, Yoongi.” Your words spark the match (and you’re shaking, shaking, even though your face is blank against the tears).

You hate the tangled emotions the most. They have no ending or beginning. They aren’t melancholy or joy. They’re transparent. And you hate not having a reason because impractical tears scare and worry people who should think about other things.

Yoongi hums against your neck, and the song is soft like sunshine through the curtains, controlled like his many convictions, and admittedly off-key—and that’s impossibly, incredibly him. He rocks from side to side with his arms around you, like a pendulum, because it’s something he can control.

Yoongi isn’t dictatorial. He has a resigned soul. Something has beaten the full time control freak out of him, and maybe it’s his life (or maybe it’s the fact that he’s a leashed wild animal chained to a lifestyle). But for his role as MC or part-time carpenter or Bangtan and you—the many things he’s taken responsibility for—he only wants to fill his role. It is a simple but painful demand, identical to your desire to make perfect sense of your emotions.

Yoongi puts up his arm and offers his sleeve. You turn and straddle his torso, facing him to give a questioning look, and he looks away. “We’re still using the cheap tissues.” He takes both your arms and guides them around his neck and presses your face into him. “So go ahead.”

His sweatshirt is soft—the way cotton worn from friction with skin is—and at that point between soft and flimsy. The way he likes it. If he could buy clothes worn like that, he would. But as is, he just washes things a few times.

He is the fresh pencil shavings he spilled on himself at midnight. He is a tang of lavender detergent from freshly washed pillows, religiously fluffed, and medicated chapstick—the yellow kind with the red cap.

“What I was humming? It’s a song I’m writing,” Yoongi says, answering your question even before your thoughts are connected to your mouth. And you’re tangling your fingers into the hairs spilling over his nape, sliding your hands from the rigid curve of his neck to his firm shoulders to his limp arms and then his cold hands. He squeezes your fingers and grips you so tight that you have to take another breath of him, of new notebook paper hitting stale air, of ink from a ballpoint smudged with a finger before it can dry, of leather, and deodorant (the scentless-but-not-really-scentless kind).

“When can I hear it?”

He makes a noise in the back of his throat like a purring cat, like something warm is rattling in his chest. “You’ll be the first.” You sit back and look at him and he smiles and his upper lip disappears. It’s one of the times where he’s so expressive that you wonder if he’s being snarky, except his eyes are soft and melting at the edges, and you’re the only thing he sees.

Min Yoongi is a man of conviction, who takes it upon himself to make sense of things ahead of time in case anyone asks, because he wants someone to need him. He is a man who, any other time, would tell you not to cry, or deadpan and say the wrong thing to make you laugh, to relieve the pit between his ribs from when you sob.

“Just feel what you’re feeling,” he says. “You don’t have to be okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> i have generalized anxiety disorder. it’s subsided a lot this year. i’ve had maybe ten attacks this year, versus my dozens in just half of last year. but it’s still there. i’m never going to be mentally normal and i never have been. my anxiety’s changed and i don’t have full-blown attacks as much but it’s still there and it’s only a matter of time before something new triggers it as life gets more hectic. i think my goal in writing this was to do it in a way that made someone feel what i’ve felt and all the metaphors were to drill in the point that it’s not as simple as it seems. this fic is highly personal for me and a lot of it is true, except i don’t have someone who’ll hold me. i have a support system, don’t get me wrong, but i don’t have anyone to do this for me. so this was painful to write but also uplifting, and i feel like people who’ve gone through what i have will feel the same way, maybe.
> 
> my other goal in writing this was not just to give someone the feeling of being comforted by yoongi, but to let them know that they’re worthy of comfort. it wasn’t to make someone sad that they don’t have anyone like this, but to remind them that they can do this for themselves, even if it’s only when you’re in a good headspace and you’re too weak otherwise, any little bit matters. yoongi is basically just a manifestation of a positive voice trying to talk against the chasm of negativity in someone’s head. he’s a character, yes, but also a vessel of myself talking to myself, loving myself, telling myself that it’s okay to not make sense. yoongi is a manifestation of an inner voice that someone might not have, that i usually only have when i’m in a good headspace, and i hope people can take that with them and maybe create their own.
> 
> [tumblr](http://sugodemic.tumblr.com/post/135667846930/panic)


End file.
